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Oddly absent from all this talk, aside from a short mention, is South Korea. If WW2 and the century before it is anything to go about, SK will get involved in t
by AYBABTME 4y ago
Oddly absent from all this talk, aside from a short mention, is South Korea. If WW2 and the century before it is anything to go about, SK will get involved in this whether they like it or not.
Some say an attack on Taiwan is inevitable. If this is true, I think a conflict between the North and the South will also happen. Everybody would be busy in Taiwan and the South would be exposed from a distracted US.
The US would certainly want to use SK as a launch platform, and then Seoul would be a legitimate target for China (and thus NK). The gap between the Chinese and SK coast isn't that large. It's almost as if the least bad thing SK can do is declare neutrality and prevent the US from using their land. China would probably contain NK in exchange.
I certainly hope no conflict will break out, and I hope I'm wrong.
- fauxpause_ 4y agoNK isn’t itching to invade SK. They would get rolled and they know it.
- photonbeam 4y agoBut it would be very, um, convenient for China if SK was distracted by NK. So it might be engineered
- fauxpause_ 4y agoIm not sure geopolitical experts would agree with this pondering
- AYBABTME 4y agoSo what's your take?
- fauxpause_ 4y agohttps://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Chinas-Three-Roads-to-Controlling-Taiwan.pdf?x91208 https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Chinas-Three-... But more generally my take is that most people have no idea how these things function at a basic level.
- AYBABTME 4y agoThe document you shared, and that which they link to referring to SK, sort of comes to the conclusion that I stated: SK would probably not allow the US to use its bases. It's the least bad position for them. Aside from securing the peninsula, any support to the US would leave SK exposed to China encouraging NK to make trouble. And even if China doesn't, NK would be emboldened by the lack of focus from the US and Japan. If there's a large scale conflict, SK might be able to hold off and defeat NK, but this wouldn't be without massive pain. That might be less likely, but small scale skirmishes already happen and I would expect much larger ones to take place under the umbrella of a wider US/China conflict. And yet, SK also doesn't really have a choice but to follow the US in a wider conflict, because of mutual defense treaties. Breaking from those agreements would ruin the long term prospects of SK, unless China prevails in the long term. It strikes me as really not an easy position for them to be in. The SK population would hate losing capitalist US as an ally and becoming closer to communist China. And yet if the US doesn't look like it'll prevail over China, geopolitics pressure would almost require SK to break from their defense treaties with the US. Yeah, to me this strikes me as an area that is really overlooked. Any conflict between the US and China would involve Tokyo, and Seoul. But Tokyo isn't as exposed to hard power from China as Seoul is. And yet, Seoul is barely mentioned in those articles.
- cmrdporcupine 4y agoThey have enough artillery pointed at Seoul to cause mass civilian casualties. It would be a humanitarian disaster on both sides of the border. Now, in a case where a (conventional) war broke out between NK and SK without China's involvement, that artillery would be carpet bombed to oblivion by US air superiority in a matter of hours/days. But if the US was tied up elsewhere, or China was providing support. Nightmare scenario.